Program Notes

We begin with the crisis in American foreign policy with our Secretary of State calling the president an “f-ing moron” and the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warning that Rex Tillerson, General Mattis and General Kelly are the “people who help separate our country from chaos”. David Rothkopf, a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a columnist at The Washington Post and the former editor and publisher of Foreign Policy Magazine, joins us to discuss reports that Trump’s top cabinet secretaries have formed a “suicide pact” in which if one is suddenly fired by an unstable and impetuous president, the others will walk out of the White House, and how Trump has undercut Tillerson publically to the point where he has no credibility abroad. We will also look into the consequences of Trump’s intention to pull out of the Iran deal next week which will sow further chaos in U.S. foreign policy and lead to more isolation and self-marginalization of the United States on the world stage.

Then we are joined in the studio by Dr. Lance Dodes, who was a clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is a contributor along with 26 other Psychiatrists and Mental Health experts who have contributed to the new book assessing President Trump, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”. We examine the consensus that Trump is dangerously mentally ill and that he presents a clear and present danger to the United States and the world as long as he has access to the nuclear codes allowing him to start a nuclear war because of a childish tantrum or some other trigger that could unhinge Trump’s frail psyche.

Then finally we look into the signals by the Republican Congress and the NRA that they will head off any serious moves on calling for gun control following the worst mass shooting in U.S. history by banning so-called “bump stocks” on semi-automatic assault rifles that allow the weapon to fire bullets at a rate similar to fully automatic machine guns. An expert on the 2nd Amendment and the history of gun control, Saul Cornell, Chair of American History at Fordham University, joins us to discuss whether any real reform will happen after the Las Vegas massacre.